Segregation in 2017

My daughter is in show choir, and her Scottsdale school just finished its fall Broadway performance. This is a school with a top notch arts program (for a public school), and hundreds of talented kids involved in theater and choir. The program for the evening was showcasing musicals that were socially progressive or that highlighted historical events. They highlighted women’s suffrage (Mary Poppins) and equality (Thoroughly Modern Millie), social media and anxiety (Dear Evan Hansen), and racial equality (Hairspray). Before the Hairspray segment, a student made a brief speech about still having a long way to go toward racial equality and how important it was to be welcoming to all Americans of all racial backgrounds and avoid the problems of segregation that were in the past.

Their performance was energetic and well executed, with dozens of male and female students singing several songs about racial integration. What was missing? There wasn’t even a single African American student in this particular performance. [1] Welcome to the 60s, indeed.

Michael Che on a recent Saturday Night Live talked about the Kaepernick kneeling controversy and said that for many black people, they only feel welcome in about 8 of the 50 states, and many of them haven’t even been to some of the flyover states. A recent episode of Adam Ruins Everything highlighted why we are still as segregated as ever in this country, and that can be summed up in one word: suburbs.

The New Deal sought to increase home ownership by making it much easier for people to get loans. However, “redlining” made discrimination a feature of this deal. What was a “new deal” for whites was a “raw deal” for blacks. Home owner communities often had explicitly racist policies encoded in their contracts. For example, a clause in the Levittown standard lease of 1947 says:

“Levittown homes must not be occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.”

From 1934 through 1968, 98% of home loans went to whites only. That’s 34 years of very recent, encoded discrimination that held back families of color out of the suburbs, and this had downstream impacts, impacts we still note in suburban communities today. I remember in the 1970s when we were moving to New Jersey, my parents said they had nearly closed on a home until the realtor let it slip that it was in a “black neighborhood.” That’s an expression that my kids in 2017 would find unfathomable–that it was openly seen as a clear dividing line between desirable and undesirable neighborhoods, but that’s how things were in the US at the time.

These advantages helped white homeowners to build wealth and send their kids to college. Even when anti-discrimination laws were passed, those in redlined neighborhoods had been held down so long financially that they couldn’t afford to move to new neighborhoods. Schools are funded by property taxes, which means that arts programs like the one my daughter is in are directly funded by the same racism that has created suburban segregated neighborhoods. That’s why a bunch of white kids in Scottsdale can get misty-eyed talking about the importance of integration and then don white go-go boots and plaid mini-dresses to dance around to snazzy tunes about civil rights.

Some friends were recently discussing a seminary class in which the Book of Mormon’s views on race were being addressed. While the teacher gamely tried to polish that turd, many of the kids shared very unsavory folk doctrines and comments about race that they had likely heard at home. One student in the class was a person of color. One. And that student had to sit and listen to these terrible speculations and beliefs from clueless classmates who don’t consider themselves racist but lack the empathy and imagination to understand how their words affect others.

The race ban has created a serious segregation problem in the church, one that we seldom discuss or address. We don’t feel racist, so we must not be racist, we like to think. Our BYU brochures, if not our actual experience, are racially diverse. Surely, we rationalize, our hearts are not racist. And yet, when we have so little racial diversity represented in both our congregations and our leadership, how can we understand the experience of others? Being insulated from exposure to other races because of the racism of the past is still going to create racist outcomes.

Like the theater kids in our Scottsdale school district, we Mormons have warm feelings toward people of color. We want to create an inclusive society. We want to achieve a post-racist standard of living. But we aren’t there, and we aren’t really even close. If this recent election has taught us anything it’s that the racism that has gotten us where we are was barely simmering below the surface, waiting to gleefully resurface and claim that even a very slight erosion of privilege is on par with over two hundred years of dehumanizing systematic discrimination.

[1] There were some other people of color. Given that this is Scottsdale, we had a few students from India and also some Latino students.

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Published by hawkgrrrl

Hawkgrrrl has been blogging since March 2008, publishing hundreds of opinion pieces. She is a wife and mother of three, a business executive, a returned missionary, and is active in her LDS ward. She likes oil painting, reading, theater, and international travel.
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13 thoughts on “Segregation in 2017”

I had to deal with this issue in our High Priest class a couple of weeks ago. When I injected the the Gosple Topic letter you would have that I was preaching false doctrine . It is amazing how many members have no idea of these statements on LDS.org. All the past statements made by our leaders are still part of culture today. The instructor last week in High Priest brought in several old books to prove how I really don’t understand the scriptures and the priesthood ban. This is going to take a long time to overcome in the church. Anyway this was a great post you put on and I look forward to reading you thoughts.

Some places in the U.S. still have “black neighborhoods” and “white neighborhoods.” I lived in a large mid-western city a few years ago, and 95% of the city was segregated in that manner. We lived in a white neighborhood, but two streets south of us was the black neighborhood. Everyone self-segregated. A friend in a mixed-race marriage had difficulty finding an accepting neighborhood. She finally moved into one of the two neighborhoods in the large city that were integrated.

De-facto segregation is one of the many reasons I moved my family out of Georgia last year. Our neighborhood elementary school there was about 90% black, which I wouldn’t have a problem with, except that we were hearing stories from other families in our ward that white kids at that school were being targeted by bullies, and they had to pull their kids out and homeschool them. The next closest elementary school was 3 miles away, and over 90% white. Our oldest was getting ready to start kindergarten, but we were too late to sign her up for school choice, which would have allowed her to attend the “white” school (neither my wife nor I grew up in Georgia, so we didn’t really know about the “unwritten order of things” until it was too late). It’s a no-win situation: either I jump through hoops to place my kid in a safer learning environment (and in the process become part of the underlying social problem) or I send her to the neighborhood school where she will have to learn about the ugliness of racism up-close and personally at a very young age. There is a time and place to teach kids about civil rights and diversity, but those lessons aren’t going to be received well if she grows up getting regularly picked on by kids who look different from her.

Keep in mind, both of these public schools were in the same school district. Funded by the same property taxes. In the wealthiest (per capita) county in the state. Just a stone’s throw from where the decisive battles of the Civil War were fought, and the birthplace of the civil rights movement. We ended up sending our daughter to a private school that year, which we could scarcely afford, but it allowed us to preserve her innocence until we were able to move away.

My high school was in the original forced de-segregation via bussing school district in the 1980s (because the school district got sued). I graduated the year before the bussing began, but according to my younger siblings, what ended up happening was the kids themselves ended up self-segregating more than they had previously. Because of the location (SF bay area) the school had a pretty diverse student body to begin with (most of my friends were asian and middle eastern), and I’ve always kind of thought the ‘force’ aspect of the de-segregation made things much, much worse in terms of integration.

Then possibly, doing the same in the bigger culture is part of our problems now. Which doesn’t offer any solutions, of course, and solutions are what is needed.

hawkgrrrl, I used to live near Scottsdale…Went to the long-gone Supai elementary school back in the 1960s… Rather large socioeconomic gradient from south to north starting from McKellips Rd. No Pima Native Americans in your daughter’s school?

Tubes: Yeah, that was a play on one of the songs they performed “Welcome to the 60s.” But yes, the point of the OP is that the suburbs (Scottsdale’s a particular good example of this) are de facto segregated.

Tom: No, but that’s because we are in No Scottsdale, not South.

Retx: I think the problems raised by forced integration are valid concerns, too, and as you say can lead to even more intra-community side-picking. Solutions are harder to come by than noticing the problems. One part of the Adam Ruins Everything program that was interesting is that one of the guests pointed out that the North was FAR more segregated than the South, but the South got lots of flack for rules like “Whites Only.” The North didn’t need these rules because there were only whites already.

I agree there is a lot of self-segregation. The problem isn’t just race, it’s also fed by self-segregation on political opinions. Earlier today I saw a local news station report on “It’s okay to be white” posters found on the University of Utah campus. The majority reaction I saw was surprise that anyone would consider this hate speech or racism, because of course it’s okay to be white. Those who were aware of the origins of the poster campaign showing up on campuses nationwide saw the dogwhistling of racism by white nationalists. Thus, the campaign successfully increased division and suspicion on either side. As long as views on race are tied to politics, I just can’t see this improving anytime soon, even with explicit statements by church leaders on “white culture.”

I lived in forced busing areas starting in the mid-70s up to the mid-00’s. The general impact is worse academics and white flight to other areas or private schools. One district we lived in was contemplating building a new high school. Instead of building in the high growth, mostly white suburban area, they decided to build in a slower growth more rural part. Some people near us were bussed past 3 private schools to get to their high school. They eventually figured out some better integration strategies, like making an academic magnet school downtown which attracted good students from the suburbs.
The red lining was still evident many years later in older cities and neighborhoods. For me, I have only lived in 1 house built during the red lining era in the past 40 years. This had no direct impact on the newer neighborhoods I lived in. I think that self segregation is the biggest current reason for racial segregation.